Emotions, Metaphors and Control in Akkadian Texts from Ancient Mesopotamia
CERES-Palais, Raum "Ruhrpott" (4.13)
Metaphor Talk by Dr Ulrike Steinert (JGU Mainz)
Cuneiform texts written in Akkadian, one of the oldest known Semitic languages, use different linguistic constructions to describe emotional experiences in ways that reflect underlying conceptual structures and metaphors. Akkadian emotion expressions attribute to experiencers varying degrees of control or agency over their body and self. Descriptions of emotional episodes can range from active performance to total loss of control. In the latter case, emotions are often constructed as agents or forces that can at times assume the status of a personified or superhuman power.
Related to this conceptualization is the culturally salient idea of divine or demonic agency as a force that can cause a range of changes in a human person’s state of being. Affliction by deities or demons connected to a loss of agency or control in the afflicted person can manifest in various forms of illness, altered states of consciousness and in overwhelming emotional experiences. The boundaries between these conceptual domains are thus fuzzy, which is reflected in comparable expressions: superhuman agents, diseases and emotions are equally said to “seize” or “overwhelm” a person. Moreover, emotional experiences are sometimes likened to altered states of consciousness, for example, when a person overwhelmed by emotion is compared to a raving ecstatic who is under the control of a deity.
The talk presents an overview of different metaphors, modes of description and the conceptualization of agency and control in emotional experiences and related states of being, through the discussion of selected Akkadian cuneiform sources from the second and first millennium BCE.
